Distribution lists are helpful when a user wishes to send a communication to a large group of contacts on a regular or periodic basis. For instance, if a user often sends email messages to a particular group of people that the user works with, then the user may choose to create an email distribution list that includes each email address corresponding to the particular group of people. After the user creates this list, the user may then conveniently send an email to each listed email address by merely specifying the created list in the address well of the email.
However, many email users choose not to create such distribution lists for multiple different reasons. For instance, some users do not know of an email application's ability to create a distribution list. Furthermore, even if these users know of the capability, many users determine that the initial cost of creating the list outweighs the benefit of actually employing the created list. That is, some users determine that the time it takes to navigate the application to find and employ this functionality outweighs the benefit of using the list. Therefore, many of these users merely find a previous email to or from the particular group of the people and then either “reply to all” of the listed email addresses or copy the listed addresses into a new message window.
Finally, many users have developed a habit of sending emails according to the names of individuals, rather than lists. That is, when a user wishes to send an email to “John Jones”, the user is likely to associated the word “John” with the corresponding email address, rather than the name of the list to which John and others belong (e.g., “Work”).
While distribution lists for emails, voicemails, and other communications have proven very useful, the creation and use of these distribution lists may be improved.